


A Supernatural Delight

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Series: Oh, Hey There, Mister Blue [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, It's Always Sunny Music: ~The Gang Uses Loki as an Air Conditioner~, Literally the Opposite of the Body Heat Sharing Trope, Questionable Interpretations of Frost Giant Mythology, Sequel but Can Stand Alone, Team as Family, That's It Guys That's the Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: The atmospheric regulator on the Guardian's ship is busted, and the temperature is starting to get just this side of unbearable.But as luck would have it, their latest recruit… generates cold in his sleep…? Somehow?Whatever, they're not questioning it.





	A Supernatural Delight

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically a sequel one-shot to [Oh, Hey There, Mr. Blue,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13061922/chapters/29877600) but if you're cool with Loki being on the Guardian's team with no explanation, then you are more than welcome to read this on its own! It doesn't reference anything else from OHTMB, so you'll be fine.
> 
> ( Titles in this series will reference either songs that are on the GotG soundtrack or those that I think should be. This one comes from _Dancin' in the Moonlight._ )
> 
> Now, enjoy some pointless fluff to make up for all the crap I put these guys through in OHTMB, and to vent my frustrations over it being 80°F in October.

If it gets  _one single degree_ hotter on this ship, Rocket thinks he might end up losing it and killing someone. Or at least he’s gonna blow a hole in one of the walls. Or open up the fridge and leave the door hanging wide open again.

He perks up a bit at that idea. Actually, he really could do that. Gamora ain’t even here to go ballistic on his ass for it this time, since she and Quill ran off in the Benatar a few hours ago to go grab the part they need to fix the atmo-regulator — and she  _did_ go ballistic on his ass, too, like he was really that outta line thinking they shouldn’t have to sit around drowning in their own sweat. Or like it was  _his_ fault the d’ast atmo-reg got busted in the first place.

… Course, to be fair, it’s a little hard for any of them to point fingers, considering the guy who’s fault it  _actually_ is has been dead for a few years now.

Rocket scratches the back of his neck, grimacing when his hand comes away all sweaty and sticky, and he glares vaguely up at the ceiling. Wherever the hell Yondu ended up, he’s probably laughing his ass off right now. Replaced the Ravager ship’s broken atmo-reg condenser coil with the cheapest possible alternative, then went and died before it had the chance to break again.

_Ha, ha. Laugh it up, asshole._

He yawns — this heat makes him  _groggy,_ dammit — and trudges his way down toward the kitchen. If Gamora wants to yell at him later, she can go right ahead. It’ll be worth a couple hours sitting in front of the fridge, anyway.

On his way to the kitchen, he passes through their makeshift communal space, the little room at the center of the ship with an old couch and a beanbag chair facing a TV set Quill's grandpa gave them when they last left Earth. Between missions it usually gets a whole lot of use, but right now it’s empty and quiet while everyone sits around in their own quarters, busy wallowing in their own heat-induced misery.

As Rocket walks around behind the couch, though, the sound of a quiet snore pulls him out of his thoughts. He frowns up at the back of the couch, and then he claws his way up the upholstery until he’s perched on the top of it, looking down at its occupant.

There are two things he realizes at the exact same time. One, that Loki fell asleep stretched across the length of the couch with a book lying open on his chest, some thick-as-hell textbook written in a language Rocket ain’t never seen before. And two—

It’s  _cold_ on this couch.

“Oh, wow,” he sighs. It feels  _awesome_ here. The sweat clinging to the fur on his back is cooling so quick that he feels like he just got dunked into a bucket of cold water — and god  _damn_ does it feel nice.

Is Loki doing that? Is he working some kind of weird magic-y voodoo in his sleep, making the air around him colder?

Whatever it is, Rocket decides pretty quick that he doesn’t care one bit. Slowly,  _real_ careful, he gently lowers himself down the upholstery until he’s standing on the couch cushion just a few inches from the arm Loki’s got draped over his own stomach. And holy  _shit,_ if he thought it was cold up on top of the back of the couch, it’s practically  _subarctic_ here. Rocket lets out an embarrassingly happy groan, then goes still as he glances around to be sure no one heard that sound come outta him — least of all Loki, who he’s relieved to see hasn’t so much as moved a muscle.

Still asleep, then. Cool. Good.

Rocket bites back another yawn.

Well, he thinks, this is just as good as the fridge, anyway. He sinks down into the space between the back of the couch and Loki’s upper arm, curling up to make himself as small as possible and avoid waking up the living air conditioner next to him.

He falls asleep in seconds.

 

* * *

 

It happens, Loki notices, in increments.

First, he wakes to the sensation of something soft brushing against his right arm, something soft and warm and  _breathing,_ and he cracks open one eye to see a ball of brown fur tucked between him and the couch back. He frowns, knowing that he should be annoyed by this for some reason, but his thoughts are muddled by sleep — he hadn’t even intended to fall asleep here, but the heat lulled him into a stupor before he ever managed to finish a single page of his book — and he barely spares it a second thought before he drifts off again, dead to the world moments later.

When he next wakes, he’s a little more lucid, his thoughts easier to grasp. The ball of brown fur is still there, and now, Loki glances down at the opposite end of the couch to find that Groot has taken a seat, having placed Loki’s legs over his lap, playing that ever-present game in his hands.

Groot glances up at him before returning his attention to his game.

“I am Groot.”

Loki frowns. “It’s not morning.”

At that, Groot only shrugs, his focus entirely on his game now. Loki glances down at Rocket, debating for just a second whether he should jab his elbow into the little creature to shoo him off, but in the end he decides against it. He’s still quite tired, too tired to deal with the effort of healing the multitude of claw marks that would no doubt result from that.

Instead, Loki allows sleep to take him again.

He can kick the two of them off the couch later.

Eventually, when he comes to again, and he looks to his left and sees the back of Drax’s head, Loki is stuck in that dazed half-asleep state that has him thinking he must be dreaming all of this. It's just too absurd. Surely Drax is not sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, his shoulder blades pressed against Loki’s left arm, while he hums softly to himself and reads — what is that, a  _cookbook_ in his lap?

“What’re you doing?”

Drax half turns to acknowledge him, then turns back to his book. “Reading recipes. I am trying to decide what to make for dinner.”

Loki shakes his head. That wasn’t what he meant, but he’s having quite a bit of trouble forming the proper words to express exactly what he  _did_ mean. He settles with, “No. Why  _here?”_

Drax shrugs, turns a page in his book. “You’re cold.”

 _Oh,_ Loki thinks, and somewhere in the murky puddle that his thoughts have become, he remembers the broken part of the ship’s atmospheric regulator, the oppressive heat that's blanketed the ship for days.

_I’m cold._

_Makes sense._

It’s the last thing he thinks before he the strange dream ends.

The dreams only get stranger from there, though. A cat digs its claws into his arm, then stretches with a yawn and curls up on his stomach to fall asleep. He hears someone speaking, talking about him — _fella seems a lot less prickly when he’s all conked out like that_ — but he never sees who the voice belongs to. Someone else lifts his head and lowers it back down onto something soft, and a warmth blooms in his chest that has absolutely nothing to do with the heat on the ship, an odd sort of…  _peace,_ maybe, settling there.

After that, his dreams are the pleasant sort that drift on the outskirts of memory, allowing him to fall into a restful sleep.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, it is  _entirely_ too quiet,” Gamora says as soon as they exit the airlock.

Peter shrugs, aiming for nonchalance and missing by about a mile. He doesn't like the implications of a silent ship, let alone  _t_ _heir_ ship, any more than she does. “Nah, I’m sure it’s just…” he trails off, glancing nervously around the empty hall, “… everyone moping around ‘cause of the heat, you know?”

Gamora shoots him an unconvinced look as she strides toward the cockpit.

“Hey, the ship’s still in one piece,” Peter reminds her, jogging to catch up. “And it’s right where we left it. So there’s that, at least.”

“True,” she agrees with a sigh, still unconvinced. She has learned, over the years, to never underestimate the trouble her family can get themselves into. And that was  _before_ they added Nebula and Loki to the mix.

Speaking of which.

“Hey,” Gamora says as she and Peter enter the cockpit to find Nebula sitting in the captain’s chair. Her sister is sitting in the seat sideways, legs dangling over the armrest, and now she leans back to look at the two of them over her shoulder.

“Well, you two certainly took your time,” Nebula observes, her eyes scanning both of them from head to toe — particularly Peter, whose hair is all mussed up from Gamora running her fingers through it, and whose skin flushes far more easily than Gamora’s does.

Nebula definitely notices, if the amused huff is anything to go by.

“Hey,” Peter defends, “that’s what autopilot’s  _for._ Don’t judge.”

Gamora rolls her eyes, pulling the new condenser coil from her pack and depositing it with a  _clunk_ on the floor beside the captain’s chair. “Where is everyone?”

“One level down,” Nebula answers. “The idiots have been quiet for once. Now I know for the future that all I have to do is re-break that” — she points without looking at the new condenser coil — “if I wish to have peace and quiet.”

Gamora frowns, opens her mouth, but is cut off by Nebula before she can say anything.

“Relax, I’m not going to. The rodent’s ceaseless complaining would make it pointless.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Peter agrees, shaking out his shirt to air it out. The heat on the ship is already getting to him. With one lingering look at Nebula sitting in what is technically his chair, Peter shakes his head and leaves the cockpit through the trapdoor at the back, making his way down the ladder.

Before following him, Gamora glances back at her sister. “Thank you for manning the controls while we were gone.”

Nebula shrugs.

Down below, Peter’s voice carries through the open trapdoor. “Gotta tell ya, I’m still surprised it’s so damn quiet in— _oh, my God,”_ he says, his voice suddenly lowered to a harsh whisper, prompting Gamora to jump and look toward the door with wide eyes. A second later, his head pops up through the opening, and he whispers, “Gamora, you have  _got_ to see this.”

There’s a sort of conspiratorial grin on his face before he disappears again. Curiosity piqued, Gamora bypasses the ladder and hops down through the trapdoor, landing lightly on her feet right behind him.

It’s cooler down here. Her augmented skin isn’t bothered by the heat, but it does register it, and the temperature is decidedly lower on this level, by five degrees or so.

Her first instinct is to assume that Rocket has left the fridge open again and let all their rations spoil. The kitchen is just behind her, after all. But then she follows Peter through the entrance into their little communal space, and the temperature continues to lower, slowly, more and more the closer they get to the couch.

“Oh,” she says when she walks around to the front of the couch, but she says nothing else, just covers her mouth, for fear that laughing aloud may wake up one of the couch’s sleeping occupants.

Wow. No wonder Peter has that look on his face.

 _Everyone_ on the ship, save for Nebula, is gathered on and around this couch, and every single one of them is fast asleep. Groot sits all the way to one side, head tipped against the back of the couch and his little game loosely held in one hand. Mantis sits on the opposite end, curled up with her arms folded on the armrest and her head pillowed on her forearms. Loki is sprawled across the entire length of the couch, his legs stretched over Groot and his feet up on the armrest, his head on Mantis’ lap. Rocket lies stretched across Loki's middle with only his legs and tail visible, his face no doubt stuffed gracelessly into one of the couch cushions. In front of them, Drax is sat on the floor, leaning against the couch with his head back, his mouth hanging open as he snores. Kraglin seems to have nestled himself with his back against Drax’s arm and his side pressed to the couch, curled up with his face hidden from view, his arms tightly crossed over his chest.

Peter grabs Gamora by the upper arm to get her attention.

“Where did I leave my camera?” he whispers.

Before Gamora can answer, though, she’s interrupted.

“Bring that camera into this room and I will vaporize it.”

Both she and Peter turn to see that Loki has opened one eye, fixing Peter with a mild glare before he closes it again. His voice was soft, almost slurred with sleep.

Peter smiles widely at him, planting his hands on his hips. He keeps his voice low as he says, “Man, I just found you in the middle of a  _cuddle pile._ You gotta know you’re never living that down whether I get a picture or not.”

Loki doesn’t open his eyes. “Mm-hmm. Regardless. No photos.”

“Oh, come on,” Peter complains in a whisper. “How’s Thor gonna believe me if I don’t have proof?”

At that, a mischievous smile cuts through the sleepy look on his face, and with his eyes still closed Loki says, “He won't.”

Gamora stifles another laugh into her hand.

“So not cool, man,” is all Peter says.

“It’s very cool, actually,” Loki answers quietly with a satisfied grin, and he shifts around the barest fraction of an inch, getting more comfortable. “Now, hush. This is the only peace and quiet I think I’ve gotten on this ship. I won’t have you ruining it.”

Peter exchanges a quick look with Gamora, shrugs, and then strides over to the couch and takes a seat on the floor, his back against Mantis’ end of the couch, just barely leaning his side into her shins. He grabs the front of his shirt again and tugs at it a few times, airing it out, and he lets out a pleased sigh as the cold starts to chase the flushed look from his skin.

“How are you  _doing_ that, man?” he whispers.

“I thought I said hush.”

“Pfft,  _sorry,_ didn’t mean to cut in on your quiet cuddle time—”

Gamora shakes her head with a smile and turns away from them. The heat is no real bother to her, and she doesn’t mind letting her family relax for a bit in the magically generated cold while she spends some time with Nebula installing the new condenser coil.

And, of course, while she grabs Peter's camera and sneaks back in here to take a photo. One does not become credited the deadliest woman in the galaxy without perfecting the art of stealth and evasion, after all.

She might as well put it to some good use.

 


End file.
